Civil society organisations from the surrounding countries to Zimbabwe will be holding peaceful placard demonstrations in front of the Zimbabwean Embassies on 10 December 2004 to mark International Human Rights Day. The demonstrations are part of a series of civil society events aimed at putting an end to ongoing human rights violations and the closure of civic space in Zimbabwe. They will provide opportunities for civil society activists, Zimbabweans in the Diaspora and citizens of Africa to show solidarity towards their Zimbabwean brothers and sisters and to advocate for the repeal and progressive amendment of existing and planned repressive legislation in Zimbabwe, including the proposed NGO Bill.

South Africa has succeeded in killing off two United Nations resolutions condemning widespread rights abuses in Sudan and Zimbabwe, ignoring European Union and American protests. The UN General Assembly's Third Committee, which covers human rights, blocked the proposed resolutions by adopting so-called "no-action motions" filed by SA on behalf of an African group of nations.

Emmerson Mnangagwa, the Zanu PF secretary for administration who only last week expressed his interest to become vice President at the party’s forthcoming Congress, is now out of the race after he lost the nomination to Water Resources Minister, Joyce Mujuru. Analysts said Mnangagwa, the Speaker of Parliament and pre-Congress favourite for the post, will have to go back to the drawing back after only four provinces nominated him, with the rest opting for Mujuru.

Higher and Tertiary Education Minister Herbert Murerwa announced recently that the government had embarked on an Ethno-based Writers’ Scheme that would, ideally, facilitate the development of education curricula in the country. Under the scheme, both lecturers and students at tertiary level would contribute in the writing of literature relevant to Zimbabwe’s political, economic and cultural realities. Murerwa said that the project was ostensibly aimed at promoting the production of learning materials.

The Zimbabwean government’s draft bill to establish an electoral commission is a step forward, but lacks key provisions that would ensure this body’s independence and impartiality during general elections in March, Human Rights Watch said in a briefing paper. The bill is currently being debated in parliament. The briefing paper details how the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission Bill contains provisions that fall short of the benchmarks for democratic elections recently agreed by the Southern African Development Community (SADC), of which Zimbabwe is a member state. “Zimbabwe’s move to establish an electoral commission is a step in the right direction,” said Peter Takirambudde, executive director of Human Rights Watch’s Africa Division. “But this bill fails to provide the protections needed to ensure a level playing field for next year’s general elections.”

The Media Monitory Project Zimbabwe has pointed to the biased coverage of the state-owned The Herald newspaper, using as an example a distorted report about a recent meeting between President Robert Mugabe and Moroccan Foreign Affairs Minister Mohammed Benaissa. “This week The Herald provided more evidence of the government media's compulsive disinformation campaign aimed at sprucing up President Mugabe's international stature when it misrepresented details of the meeting between the Zimbabwean leader and Moroccan Foreign Affairs Minister Mohammed Benaissa. The paper's report claimed that Morocco had, via Benaissa, 'extended an invitation to President Mugabe to help mediate in the conflict over the Saharawi'. No hard evidence was provided to substantiate this claim. Only the Zimbabwe Independent three days later reported that The Herald story was false." Read the full newsletter by clicking on the link below.

A top International Monetary Fund (IMF) official said President Robert Mugabe has had a change of heart and now wants to resume relations with the multilateral financier. In a Press statement after meeting Mugabe in Harare earlier this week IMF director for Africa, Abdoulaye Bio Tchane, said the Zimbabwean leader had assured him he wanted a new and meaningful relationship with the lending institution.

Zimbabwean civil society agencies (CSOs) based in South Africa have resolved to join hands to find a common approach to helping refugees who have fled to the country to escape poverty and persecution under Robert Mugabe's government. Of the 3.4 million Zimbabweans (about 25% of the country's population believed to have left the country) an estimated one to two million were living in South Africa, legally and illegally, they claimed.

The commercial agricultural organisation, Agri SA, has welcomed the South African government's announcement that it would soon reach an agreement with Zimbabwe on land rights for South Africans in that country. SABC radio has reported that Mandisi Mpahlwa, the trade and industry minister, had said negotiations had been finalised and that an agreement was ready to be signed.

Zanu PF insiders have said it is now a fait accompli that Emmerson Mnangagwa will be appointed the successor to President Robert Mugabe as leader of the ruling party and government at the December congress. His two deputies will be John Nkomo and Didymus Mutasa. A number of things emerge from this scenario. The first is that Zanu PF wants the old guard to remain in power at all cost. It is clear that there is no room, as yet, for the younger generation of politicians.

Zimbabwe's economy is expected to experience another meltdown if the Non Governmental Organisations Bill becomes law, officials working with NGOs have said. Jacob Mafume, the co-ordinator of the National Association of Non Governmental Organisations'(NANGO) team working on a response to the Bill, said the full impact of the law was still being assessed. "We are still finalising the full economic and social impact that the bill will have on Zimbabweans but a conservative estimate is that if each of the 3 000 NGOs is employing five people, then 15 000 people will lose their jobs." Meanwhile, the bill made a midnight debut in Zimbabwe's parliament this week. Read a briefing on the process through the link below.

The UK government is to end its two-year suspension of deportations of failed asylum seekers to Zimbabwe because the concession has been abused, the immigration minister, Des Browne, announced. The decision was immediately criticised by refugee welfare groups who expressed concern that anybody was to be forcibly returned to Robert Mugabe's regime and demanded that the fate of those sent back be monitored by the British authorities.

Internet websites on Zimbabwe continue to mushroom as government closes down independent local newspapers to stop the flow of information deemed anti-Mugabe. A group of former Zimbabwean journalists and other professionals now based overseas have launched an independent political website, Zimdaily.com. The website was launched in July and has had a daily publication since then. Owners of the website, who declined to be named for security reasons, said in written response that the website was being run by Zimbabweans in the diaspora.

Zimbabwe's parliament has agreed to amend its already tough media code making it mandatory for journalists to register with a state commission. Journalists who fail to do so, could face up to two years in prison, a fine, or both. President Robert Mugabe is expected to sign the amendment into law by the end of the month. The act is likely to deter foreign correspondents who have been entering the country disguised as tourists.

Estimates of food aid needs in Zimbabwe should be revised as maize prices have climbed well above anticipated levels, the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) has warned. "Due to much higher than expected maize prices, and no evidence of commensurate increases in rural incomes, the rural population in need of food aid is almost certainly higher than that originally estimated by the ZimVAC [Zimbabwe Vulnerability Assessment Committee] in May 2004," FEWS NET said in its latest food security report.

The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), stung by last week’s humiliating deportation of its top officials, is mobilising civic groups in the region to seal entry points into Zimbabwe for four days — a move that could trigger a diplomatic rift between the two countries. The proposed blockade, being coordinated in conjunction with Amnesty International in Johannesburg, South Africa, is pencilled for December 4 to 8 2004, according to information obtained by The Financial Gazette.

Although 86 percent of women farm for a living on land in communal areas run by traditional chiefs, legislation is silent on the issue of land inheritance under these circumstances. According to custom, chiefs allocate land to male heads of households, but women do not automatically inherit this land upon a husband's death. Consequently, they may be evicted from the land when widowed. Although Zimbabwe's constitution prohibits discrimination on grounds of gender, it allows this clause to fall away where it runs contrary to customary law. Thus, if the husband dies, "the widow does not automatically inherit his land, which was not his to give away anyway," Edith Mashawidza, chairperson of the Women and Land in Zimbabwe lobby, told IRIN.

Children receiving food aid are often stigmatised and maltreated by guardians, according to the findings of a pilot project in Zimbabwe to assess the impact of food interventions on children. The project was prompted by a lack of "humanitarian accountability to beneficiaries" and the fact that feedback from children had never been considered in the significant number of interventions taking place in Zimbabwe, said Chris McIvor of the UK-Based NGO, Save the Children, which conducted the study.

Zimbabwe's beleaguered ruling party has introduced a Bill banning foreign funding of, and imposing extraordinary state controls over, non-governmental organisations involved in human rights and governance activities. Resorting to Africa-centrism and its 1964 ideology of "we are our own liberators", Zanu PF claims these organisations tot up murder and torture accounts and teach the bourgeois delusions of multiparty democracy and individual liberty all for the Blair-Bush conspiracy. Zanu PF liberated Zimbabwe on its own, it says: so should its challengers. Is this belief myth or lie? Zanu PF's version of struggle history forgets scores of foreign supporters, argues this commentary on the website of the Centre for Civil Society at the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal.

The government set October as the month by which schools – both public and private – should submit their 2005 budget proposals for approval. The amounts set will have to cover the whole of next year, as the Ministry of Education has indicated it will not entertain requests for supplementary levies. Zimbabwe’s annual inflation rate is amongst the highest in the world, however – officially pegged at 252 percent. The continual escalation in prices for goods and services – everything from chalk to fuel – makes projecting financial needs a year ahead akin to gazing in a crystal ball.